St. Petersburg Noir

by Natalia Smirnova

  But that’s just first of all.

  Second of all: I loved Tamara. It was just by chance that her windows faced Moskovsky Prospect.

  By the way, I didn’t rat on Yemelianych. I took all the blame.

  * * *

  I’m not supposed to think about Tamara.

  I won’t.

  I met her … well, what difference does it make to you?

  Before that I lived in Vsevolozhsk, outside St. Petersburg. When I moved into Tamara’s place on Moskovsky Prospect, I sold my apartment in Vsevolozhsk and invested the money in a financial pyramid scheme. There were tons of pyramid schemes back then.

  I loved Tamara not for her beauty—of which, to be honest, there was none—and not even because when we had sex she called loudly for help, shouting out the names of her former lovers. I don’t know myself why I loved her. She gave me love in return. She had an excellent memory. Tamara and I often played Scrabble. Tamara always beat me. Seriously, I never tried to lose on purpose. I told her lots of times that she should be working in a bookstore on Nevsky Prospect, where they sell dictionaries and the latest novels, not at the fish counter in a grocery store. People don’t read much nowadays. Back then everyone read a whole lot.

  * * *

  Like I said, my legs took me here all by themselves. Sooner or later, I would have come here anyway, however much they told me not to think about it.

  It’s just that in those two years that I was living with Tamara, the poplar grew. Poplars grow fast, even the ones that look like they’re fully grown. And when you see something slowly changing before your very eyes in the space of a year, or a year and a half, or two, you figure that you’re changing too, along with it. So it was changing, and so was I. And everything around us changed, and definitely not for the better. Except for that tree, which just continued to grow. Long story short, I didn’t understand that I had anything in common with that tree. I only realized it just now, when I saw the worker cutting it down. And just by chance I had to stop by this address at the very moment they were cutting down the tree! And all those memories started up in me right then. The ones I’m not supposed to think about.

  * * *

  Her wages were miserable. Mine too. (I used to occasionally fix TVs—old Soviet models with tubes. People still had them, but by the sixth of June, 1997, people didn’t even want them fixed anymore.) Anyway, we lived together.

  Once I asked Tamara (when we were playing Scrabble) if she would take part in an assassination attempt on Yeltsin.

  “In Moscow?” she said.

  “No, when he visits St. Petersburg.”

  “Oh, when is that ever going to happen?” she said. Then she asked me how I was going to do it.

  “Like this,” I said. The big black cars speed down Moskovsky Prospect. Before they turn onto Fontanka, they generally slow down (because they have to). Tamara runs out in front of the car, falls to her knees, and raises her hands up to the sky. The presidential limousine stops, Yeltsin, curious about what’s going on, gets out and asks who she is. And there I am with the handgun. Bang, bang, bang, bang …

  Tamara said that, luckily, I didn’t have a gun. Of course she was wrong, because, luckily or not, the Makarov was still under the sink behind the pipes in the bathroom. And there were twenty bullets too, in a plastic bag. But Tamara didn’t know a thing about it. She was convinced that no one would stop, anyway, if she threw herself in front of the cortege. And if the presidential limousine stopped, Yeltsin wouldn’t get out. That’s what I thought too: Yeltsin won’t get out.

  I just wanted to test Tamara, to know whether she was with me or not.

  * * *

  Then he asked me, shining a light in my face: did I love Tamara? For some reason, not only the head but the entire bunch of investigators wanted to know the answer to this question. Yeah, I loved her. Otherwise I would never have held out for two years on that noisy, stinky Moskovsky Prospect, even if I had only one passion—to kill Yeltsin.

  In fact, I had two passions—my love for Tamara and my hatred for Yeltsin.

  Two uncontrollable passions. Love for Tamara and hatred for Yeltsin.

  And if I didn’t love her, would she really have called me “honey,” and “loverboy,” and “snookums”?

  * * *

  A lot of people wanted to kill Yeltsin back then. And a lot of them did. In their heads. 1997. The year before that there had been elections. Please, no historical digressions. I’ve had it up to here with those already. Is there anyone who doesn’t know how they counted the votes?

  I used to chat with a lot of people in the buildings surrounding our courtyard at 18 Moskovsky Prospect, and every single person denied they voted for Yeltsin in ’96. And that’s just in one courtyard. What if you take the entire country? I didn’t vote. Why vote when you didn’t have to?

  They did an operation on him, an American doctor remade the heart vessels.

  Oh, I’m supposed to forget about this.

  I forgot.

  I’ll shut up.

  I’m okay now.

  So …

  * * *

  So I lived with Tamara.

  The papers had recently discussed the possibility of his death on the operation table.

  I remember how in one paper, I forget which one, they warned me and others like me against making a life strategy based on expecting him to die.

  But I don’t want to go into the motives of my decision.

  As for Tamara …

  * * *

  Haymarket Square is a stone’s throw away—at the end of Moskovsky Prospect. They had chased away most of the black-market dealers by then. But you could always sniff out a grapevine that led you straight to a dealer, depending on what kind of dealer you were looking for. In this case—someone selling the thing that goes bang!

  That’s the kind of dealer I found in the vacant lot where Yefimov Street runs into Haymarket Square.

  * * *

  Anyway, it wasn’t that Yemelianych supported me in everything—but we were always together. He drank too much, though, and really rotten stuff. He bought it at the kiosks by the Vitebsky train station.

  One day he said that he had a whole organization behind him. And that they wanted to take me in.

  In our organization, he was one step higher than me, and so he knew others—from our organization, that is. I only knew Yemelianych. He lived in the building next to mine, in number 16. His windows faced the street crossing, and if Yeltsin showed up, he could take better aim. But we didn’t plan to shoot at the car. Why shoot at it when it was armored? That’s nonsense. That’s both suicide and undermining the whole idea. But I said that already, didn’t I?

  But here’s what I haven’t talked about yet: we had another idea.

  * * *

  June of 1997 rolled around. On the fifth of June, Yemelianych told me that Yeltsin was coming to Petersburg the next day. I already knew. Everyone who had even the slightest interest in politics already knew.

  The president wanted to celebrate the 198th birthday of Pushkin in Petersburg.

  Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. Our national poet.

  I was anticipating the assassination attempt.

  Yemelianych told me that the leaders of our organization were laying down a plan. Tomorrow evening, the sixth of June, the president would go to the Mariinsky Theater, formerly the Kirov Opera and Ballet. Someone would take me backstage beforehand. Yeltsin would be sitting in the front row. After that, it would be like when they killed Stolypin.

  The only difference would be that I would come out onstage.

  The weapon I would use I had bought myself, with my own money, not the money of the organization that Yemelianych was more involved in than me.

  But I wasn’t thinking about any career ladder.

  * * *

  And what about Tamara? She was already sick of the name Yeltsin. She asked me not to talk about him. Let me tell you something, though: she was afraid that my hatred for him would crowd out my lo
ve for her. And she was sort of right. She was right to be afraid. I remember my hatred for him more than my love for her. But I loved her, all right … Boy, how I loved Tamara!

  * * *

  I have a good memory too.

  Gosha, Arthur, Grigorian, Ulidov, some Vanyusha, Kuropatkin, and seven more …

  First names, last names, nicknames. I didn’t hide anything.

  I didn’t name Yemelianych, and I didn’t betray the organization.

  Yemelianych wasn’t Tamara’s lover.

  Them? I betrayed all of them. Why did she have to yell out their names like that?

  In the beginning the investigators thought she was an accomplice. They were interested in the network of relationships.

  Let them try to figure it out themselves if they want.

  It’s not my business. It’s their job.

  * * *

  In the little park opposite, I met someone from the building next door. Yemelianych pointed him out to me, said they were neighbors.

  Yemelianych’s neighbor was a writer. With a beard, in a Sherlock Holmes cap. He was often there sitting on the bench.

  I think he was crazy. When I asked him whether he could kill Yeltsin, he answered that he and Yeltsin lived in two different worlds.

  I asked him: who are you with, the masters of culture? He didn’t understand the question.

  * * *

  No, I remembered. I remembered how at the end of Gorbachev’s perestroika a large group of writers went to Yeltsin in the Kremlin to show the president their support. And there wasn’t a single one among them who would even pitch a glass ashtray at the man! Forty people—that’s a lot! And no one probably even checked them for weapons. Anyone could have brought one in. So now I ask: Valeriy Georgievich, why didn’t you bring a handgun and shoot Yeltsin? No answer. And I ask: Vladimir Konstantinovich, why didn’t you bring a handgun and shoot Yeltsin? No answer. And I ask the others—there were forty of them!—no answer. No answer! No answer from any of them!

  And this one, the one with the beard in the park, tells me he wasn’t invited.

  And if you had been, would you have shot Yeltsin?

  Who gets to to be invited? What did you have to write to be invited, so you could shoot Yeltsin?

  What do you write, and who needs it, if everything keeps going along just as it is, predetermined by the powers that be?

  * * *

  Sometimes I wanted to become a writer myself. Yeltsin must have needed supporters, and he must have invited new ones to the Kremlin, and I would be one of them—with a handgun in my pants under my belt—and do you think I wouldn’t reach for it at the sound of “Dear Fellow Russians,” and that I wouldn’t do it?

  Oh, for that I would write! I would write anything just to be invited!

  * * *

  As for the handgun: I kept it in the bathroom, behind the pipes under the sink.

  Tamara didn’t know.

  Though I told her a million times that he deserved a bullet in his stomach, and she sort of agreed.

  Yemelianych I didn’t betray, and I didn’t betray the organization that was behind him.

  The investigation went another route.

  Gosha, Arthur, Grigorian, Udilov, some Vanyusha, Kuropatkin, and seven more …

  I added the writer with the beard too.

  * * *

  It was the morning of the sixth of June. I was still at home. In my mind I was getting ready for the evening’s exploit. But I didn’t think about fame and glory.

  At nine o’clock I was supposed to get a call. Nine, nine fifteen, he didn’t call. Why didn’t Yemelianych call?

  At nine thirty I called him.

  He didn’t pick up for a long time. Finally he did. I heard a familiar voice, but I realized that Yemelianych was drunk as a skunk. I couldn’t believe my ears. How could this be? Yeltsin was already landing! What is your problem? How could you do this? Relax. Chill. Everything has changed. What do you mean, changed? Why? There’s not going to be a performance, says Yemelianych. The Golden Cockerel is dead. The opera, I mean. (Or the ballet?)

  I screamed something about betrayal.

  Cool it, Yemelianych said, get ahold of yourself. There will still be another chance. Just not today.

  * * *

  I was stir crazy the whole morning.

  The grocery store underneath us was closed for fumigation. They had been spraying for cockroaches since opening that day, and the salesgirls were dismissed early. Tamara came home smelling of chemicals.

  On Moskovsky Prospect, I forgot to say, there’s a lot of traffic. It’s always noisy. In the two years I shared the place with Tamara I learned to live with it.

  I was in the room. I remember (although I’m not supposed to remember) that I busied myself watering the plants. Cacti, to be exact. Tamara was taking a shower. Then suddenly it went quiet outside our windows. Though there was still sound coming from the bathroom—the shower. But outside it was quiet. The traffic had stopped.

  That could only mean one thing. They were clearing the road for Yeltsin. He had flown in already, and would soon be at our crossing. I knew he was flying in. Of course I knew. According to our original plan, I was supposed to take him out at the opera (or was it a ballet?).

  But now the ballet was canceled. (Or was it the opera?)

  The Golden Cockerel, Yemelianych said.

  Anyway, I’m at the window. All is quiet on Moskovsky. Cops are posted on the far side of the road. No traffic at all. They’re waiting. And here comes a cop’s Mercedes (or bigger than a Mercedes?) to make sure everything’s ready for the president’s cortege to roll on through. They always check everything beforehand.

  All the same I had to get the gun and head outside. A voice inside commanded me. And another voice inside said: Don’t grab the gun, just go outside and take a look, the gun won’t work, you know that.

  All the same I decided to take the handgun. But Tamara was in the shower.

  * * *

  Tamara bolted the door when she took a shower. She had started to do that in April. She thought that if the shower made a noise it would turn me on—like I’d be out of control. It wasn’t like that. Well, not the way she imagined, anyway.

  See, we had this one nearly inexplicable episode a couple of months before.

  Since then she had started to lock me out.

  But I was talking about something. What does the bathroom have to do with it?

  * * *

  Oh, yeah, so I remembered about the hiding place, and ran to the bathroom and banged on the door. I shouted, Open up!

  Again? Tamara yelled (pretending to be mad). Get lost!

  Calm down!

  Open up, Tamara! There’s not a second to lose!

  Get lost! I won’t open up!

  But she didn’t know I had a gun hidden behind the pipes.

  What if she had known?

  What did she know, anyway? What was she thinking? She didn’t know a thing about me. She didn’t know I wanted to kill Yeltsin. And that the hiding place was in the bathroom.

  And if I was really so turned on by the sound of the shower, wouldn’t I have broken down the door? After that time in April I had a lot of opportunities to break into the bathroom when she was in the shower, but I never smashed the bolt. Plus, she was provoking me (I realized it later on) on purpose.

  Anyway.

  I would have smashed the bolt, if a voice inside me hadn’t stopped me—a second one, not the first. Calm down, it said. Go outside and act all cool and casual. The gun won’t be of any use to you. The plan has changed. Go outside and take a look. Just hang out there. Until he passes by.

  I ran outside in my bedroom slippers, so as not to waste another second.

  I ran out of the building but slowed down to a normal pace in the courtyard. I walked out onto the sidewalk. Yeltsin hadn’t passed by yet. There were people strolling down the sidewalk. Just as they always did. A few people stopped and looked into the distance. Far away, behind the Obvodny
Canal, the Triumphal Gate was visible, a memorial to the war with Napoleon.

  Usually, when government dignitaries were passing through, they closed the streets at least ten minutes beforehand, so there was still time.

  From the Fontanka Embankment side, they had blocked off traffic. There were cars waiting there. I couldn’t see them from where I was, though.

  It was strange to gaze across the empty street. The emptiness was alarming, somehow. There wasn’t a single parked car. They had towed them all away.

  Another police car whizzed by. It turned from Moskovsky to the Fontanka—to the left, that is. There was plenty of room there.

  It was no secret that Yeltsin would drive along that route. It was the only route.

  I peered up at the roof of the Railroad Engineering Institute. Were there snipers anywhere?

  There didn’t seem to be.

  * * *

  My situation was this: On my right hand over the Fontanka River was the Obukhovsky Bridge. Across the street was a park, a traffic light, and a cop’s sentry box. A historical site—a tall milestone in the shape of a marble obelisk—in the eighteenth century the city boundary followed along the Fontanka here.

  I remember every second of the events that followed. Here they come—they are getting closer, driving down Moskovsky. The presidential limo wasn’t first in the cortege, but the first car had already reached me, and then slowed down—there was a left turn coming up ahead. I’m looking, of course, at the president’s car. And others are looking too, not just me; other bystanders and people just walking by. And I’m looking and thinking, Is that really him in the car? Or is it just a decoy? A decoy in a real armored car? And then I see his hand. It’s definitely his, waving slightly in mute greeting—behind glass, in the backseat—and who’s he waving to, if not me? Sure it’s me! That was when he was right in front of me.